We spoke with the Answer Underground folks about what they think it takes to make a better mobile learning app. Not surprisingly, they had done plenty of research in this area as well.

They found that the biggest feature students want in an app is simply not a ton of features. Students say hunting for answers via Google can be cumbersome as it’s easy to get quickly distracted or lost in the clutter of ads and related links. In fact, even toolbar bookmarks in browsers can be too distracting.

Being able to do one task very well is the key to a good app. Don’t try to be a Swiss Army Knife for everything in education. An app like Answer Underground performs one function well.

Moira Butterfield and Nosy Crow keen to see authors and publishers collaborating more on book-apps.

Kate Wilson: "We'd love to find authors who are interested in working on apps," writes Wilson. "But writing a highly interactive, multimedia children's app that is a satisfying reading experience is not the same as writing a picture book."

She outlines several reasons: apps are more collaborative processes than printed books – "more, perhaps, like writing a film-script than writing a book" – and may require authors to be thinking more about what goes into animation and coding. They're non-linear experiences too, where the linear narrative sits alongside interactive elements.

"Apps are new, and they're developing fast. I think that authors who are interested in writing in this space need to keep up with developments, immerse themselves in this world and get to know the best of the apps that are out there, and, even better, spend time with children who are reading those apps to see how they use the screen and what they expect from it," writes Wilson.

How do we know if a digital book is of a quality to support children's literacy development? An answer to this question must be constructed by all who contribute to a child's growth as a literate person.

- All designers of digital books should be aware of issues surrounding digital book design in relation to the promotion of literacy skills in children.

- Designers and developers need to think carefully about the development of interactivity, prompts and interface because, as this initial report suggests, these prompts do not necessarily enhance the reading experience for children and parents in co-reading situations.

Apple's Third Quarter earnings call on Tuesday unveiled some information that goes to show just how useful the iPad is for educators.

“I’ve never seen an adoption rate like this in the past,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook.

The company announced it sold twice as many iPads as Macs for use in educational environments. Apple sold 1 million iPads for educational purposes, and interest in the iPad2 in k-12 was strong, it was said during the call

My tablet is rarely far from my side – and that’s just the point. It enhances my interaction with family, friends and colleagues. I also love that it happens to be home to my somewhat scattered taste in music!

And it’s not just adults using tablets for themselves: seven out of 10 tablet owning adults with children say their kids use the devices as well.

In my case, the kids seem to delight in adding applications, movies and TV shows to my tablet! They so naturally interact with it, it’s remarkable. They’re the embodiment of the now common notion that people will gravitate towards the best available screen. If we’re travelling, the best available screen is often my tablet, so sometimes it’s a battle to retain control!

... Researchers (at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center) found that print and basic e-books are better if parents and educators want to emphasize building literacy skills over just reading for fun. The interactive features of enhanced e-books can distract parents and kids from the story, impacting what kids absorb and the kinds of questions that parents ask.

But when it comes to motivating reluctant readers, enhanced e-readers may entice them in ways that print and basic e-books would not, the study said.

It's a fair certainty that e-books are here to stay, so it's up to parents and educators to determine the role they should play—as it is with all electronic media— in children's lives.

Most Popular Search Criteria in the KinderTown AppAge is by far the most popular search criteria, with 50.2% of searches specifying an age criteria. Price was second at 40.6% followed by Platform (31.8%) and Type (30.2%)

There are two ways to design play for children in the digital age, especially if your game is products that you want parents to buy to support the learning and development of their children.

You can either: guess or observe.

Guessing is where you imagine what children need, you look at the research on paper, you think about your childhood or your children's experience and you develop an app, a digital learning environment, a toy, a puzzle that you believe will be appropriate for children.

This is a reasonable way to develop a product, it is also very hit and miss. We see a lot of apps being developed in this environment and not enough testing or iterations of an idea. We see simulations of toys and many copies of successful interactive tools. It isn't surprising many fail to meet both the creators' and parents' expectations. Young children, well they just don't give poorly designed learning tools a second chance.

With observation you need more patience. It is the skill that early childhood professional learn and enact in childcare centers and kindergartens and early years settings before most other things. And, it is a wonderful approach to employ when designing play and digital learning environments for young children.

Apple (...) introduced "Guided Access" a feature aimed at children to keep them from exiting out of the program assigned to them. It is sort of a fail safe built into the iPhone and iPad to keep the child focused on the task at hand, whether it be a book or a test administered by a teacher.

The second annual edition of BookStats, a collaborative venture between the Book Industry Study Group and the Association of American Publishers, has just been released and brings good news for children's fiction.

Hondsrug College in the Netherlands shows us today, content is still king.

This private Christian school made headlines last year when they announced that they were issuing iPads to all the students. They were the first school in the Netherlands to do so, spending over a quarter of a million euros to buy 700 iPads. And today they are getting even more attention as they transition back to paper textbooks.

According to sources, the school was more than capable of running the hardware side of the iPad program, but in their rush to use the tablets they forgot to make sure that their curriculum was ready to be used on it. There simply wasn’t enough academic content in Dutch, and from the sounds of things the teachers hadn’t transitioned their material either.

When faced with a troublesome child, parents have traditionally turned to a toy or a dummy for help in restoring the peace. But, in a sign of the times, they are increasingly reaching for a rather more high-tech solution . . . a smartphone. More than one in four mothers admits to handing over a phone to a crying or bored tot when they need entertaining, research has found.

And it is more common than shoving a dummy in their mouth or giving them a soft toy or even a bottle in these high tech times.A range of apps for youngsters, including games, puzzles and educational programmes, means smartphones are now a parent’s best friend, said Asda.

The study found 27 per cent of mothers give their phones to their children to keep them entertained.And although 40 per cent of these restrict playtime to no longer than ten minutes, 10 per cent admitted leaving their children to play with their mobile for anything up to two hours.

Apps have become vital in marketing mobile technologies to consumers, and the allegiance of app developers to Apple has helped propel the success of its devices.

(...) Developers say it is easier, and therefore less costly, to develop apps for the iPhone than for Android phones, in part because there are far more models of Android phones in use, with different screen sizes, processors and other technologies.

The variations in hardware and software are not insurmountable obstacles, developers say, but performing the testing to ensure that apps run properly on most Android phones adds time and cost.

“Writing apps consistently across all of them is really hard,” said Nat Brown, an independent iOS developer in Seattle who has created a line of children’s apps for the iPhone.

Mr. Brown also said he periodically considered writing Android apps, but had decided against it in part because iPhone users have demonstrated a higher willingness than Android users to pay for apps.

(...)

Apple has been far more effective in getting iPhone users to update their phones with the latest version of iOS than Google and its partners have with Android. This makes it easier for iPhone developers to write their apps because there is less variation in the underlying software on the devices.

One other advantage Apple has among developers is the iPad, which has so far maintained its dominance in the tablet category, despite challenges by an assortment of Android tablets.

(...)

One occasional source of discontent among Apple’s developers is the greater control that the company exerts over its App Store, for which it takes a more hands-on approach to approving software for distribution than Google does.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.